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Eero Saarinen

The swinging ’60s wouldn’t have been half as groovy without Eero Saarinen’s spectacular TWA Flight Center at JFK airport. Completed in 1962, the terminal became an icon of modern architecture as well as the glamorous “jet set” experience. With its spaceship-like exterior and strangely curved staircases and walls, the terminal was meant to capture the drama and excitement of flight itself. Though he died shortly before it was opened to the public, the architect is said to have remarked, rather prophetically, “if anything happened, and they had to stop work right now and just leave it in this state, I think it would make a beautiful ruin, like the Baths of Caracalla.”

Saarinen’s terminal was declared a landmark in 1994, but closed abruptly after 9/11 due to…

Kevin Roche, a man and his skyscraper
You might not think that any architect dubbed the darling of corporate America in the 1960s and 70s would also be well-respected by his colleagues and the greater architectural community, but Kevin Roche’s most notable designs had the unique ability to bring technological know-how, innovative design and the corporate workforce together in harmony. Roche won the Pritzker Prize in 1982 for his unflinching commitment to improve upon humdrum corporate architecture through modernity. In his mostly large-scale projects (he called it “the scale of the future”) he sought to create “more understandable environments” and happy, more productive workers by encouraging their interactions with nature in large, open, communal spaces.